Firefighters reject pay deal

Firefighters are to go ahead with a national strike tomorrow evening after last-ditch peace talks collapsed today.

Leaders of the Fire Brigades Union spent just a few minutes with local authority employers but were not given the improved pay offer they had been seeking.

FBU general secretary Andy Gilchrist said he was extremely angry at the lack of progress today and blamed the Government for interfering in the bitter dispute.

More than 50,000 firefighters across the UK will now walk out from 6pm tomorrow for 48 hours followed by a series of eight-day-long strikes between the end of November and Christmas Eve.

Mr Gilchrist emerged from the talks in central London to address a group of around 100 firefighters who were waiting outside for any developments.

Speaking through a megaphone he said the employers had told him they were linking any proposed deal with the recommendations of the independent review chaired but Sir George Bain.

The review suggested that firefighters should receive a pay rise of 4% now and 7% next year but only if firefighters agreed to accept big changes in working practices.

Mr Gilchrist told the firefighters that the employers offer was going to be "inextricably linked" to the Bain report.

The union's executive decided that they could not accept any offer which followed the Bain recommendations and decided that the strike would go agead.

There were huge cheers, loud applause, blowing of whistles and sounding of horns from firefighters waiting outside the talks when they heard the news.Mr Gilchrist accused the Government of intervening twice to prevent a settlement.

"The Government has successfully provoked a national firefighters strike," he claimed.

The union leader said that firefighters had acted with "incredible patience" during the long-running dispute but had been met with "contempt".

Mr Gilchrist added: "I am extremely angry. We have no alternative other than to reject the insulting offer which has been made to some the finest public servants in the world."

Mr Gilchrist said he hoped that people in Government who had provoked the strike would now look carefully at their conscience.Downing Street said that the civil contingencies committee - codenamed Cobra - would meet tomorrow to lead response to the firefighters' strike.

The committee brings together Government ministers, senior civil servants, chiefs of military and emergency services and outside experts to deal with emergencies.

Details of who would attend tomorrow's meeting were not yet available, but a Downing Street spokesman said it would probably be chaired by local government minister Nick Raynsford.

The two sides were together for less than an hour, spending most of the morning in separate meetings discussing the controversial Bain Report.

Mr Gilchrist said of the report: "This must be the only report in living memory into public services to recommend longer hours."

He claimed that the offer of a 4% rise might not even apply to all firefighters and had many strings - "even ropes" - attached.

Firefighters who waited outside the meeting said later they were determined to press ahead with the strikes to force the employers back to the negotiating table.

Matt Wrack, the unions' regional organiser in London, said: "It is clear that the Government's interference took away from the employers any room for manoeuvre.

"FBU members will find it remarkable that we have only been offered a 4% pay rise when we know the employers were prepared to offer 16% earlier in the year."Mr Gilchrist said later that the £280 million the fire service had asked the Government for to train and equip firefighters to deal with a terrorist incident had not been forthcoming.

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: "The fire service is no better prepared today than it was one day after September 11 last year.

"The simple situation is that when firefighters and emergency fire control staff are on strike, they will not be at their place of work, and despite their humanitarian instincts they will not be able to respond in a co-ordinated way.

"Firefighters will respond to anybody that's in any threat of danger, and even on that scale of course that would happen.

"What I am saying is our effective and efficient response that we have now will not be available.

"I would rather talk actually about resolving the issue of pay than actually planning how we are going to operate for the weeks and months of a strike."

In addition to the first 48-hour strike, the FBU is planning to hold three eight-day-long strikes starting on November 22, December 4 and December 16. Each one will begin at 9am.